Recently I blogged that the only path forward for American (and indeed world) health care was to harness the power of computers, software and communication technology to create a system that delivered significantly better care at a significantly lower cost.
This morning that system has come a little bit closer: Google has announced plans to build a new type of broadband network 100 times faster than current networks allow. The new networks, among other things, will allow high definition three-dimensional medical images to be sent from rural communities to specialist diagnosticians. This is just one part of an ongoing technological revolution that will change the way health care works in ways much wilder and more far-reaching than anything dreamed of in the current bills in Congress.
Promoting the development of technological advances like this one and creating policies and incentives that bring them quickly on line is the crucial task that, in the long term, will enable us to provide significantly better care to significantly larger numbers of people in an affordable fashion over the long term. If we succeed at this all our other health care problems will be manageable; if we fail, nothing else we do will give us the kind of health care system we need.